He left her at the door of Madame de Chantelle's sitting-room, and plunged out alone into the rain.
The wind flung about the stripped tree-tops of the avenueand dashed the stinging streams into his face. He walked tothe gate and then turned into the high-road and strode alongin the open, buffeted by slanting gusts. The evenly ridgedfields were a blurred waste of mud, and the russet covertswhich he and Owen had shot through the day before shivereddesolately against a driving sky.
Darrow walked on and on, indifferent to the direction he wastaking. His thoughts were tossing like the tree-tops.
Anna's announcement had not come to him as a completesurprise: that morning, as he strolled back to the housewith Owen Leath and Miss Viner, he had had a momentaryintuition of the truth. But it had been no more than anintuition, the merest faint cloud-puff of surmise; and nowit was an attested fact, darkening over the whole sky.
In respect of his own attitude, he saw at once that thediscovery made no appreciable change. If he had been boundto silence before, he was no less bound to it now; the onlydifference lay in the fact that what he had just learned hadrendered his bondage more intolerable. Hitherto he had feltfor Sophy Viner's defenseless state a sympathy profoundlytinged with compunction. But now he was half-conscious ofan obscure indignation against her. Superior as he hadfancied himself to ready-made judgments, he was aware ofcherishing the common doubt as to the disinterestedness ofthe woman who tries to rise above her past. No wonder shehad been sick with fear on meeting him! It was in his powerto do her more harm than he had dreamed...
Assuredly he did not want to harm her; but he diddesperately want to prevent her marrying Owen Leath. Hetried to get away from the feeling, to isolate andexteriorize it sufficiently to see what motives it was madeof; but it remained a mere blind motion of his blood, theinstinctive recoil from the thing that no amount of arguingcan make "straight." His tramp, prolonged as it was, carriedhim no nearer to enlightenment; and after trudging throughtwo or three sallow mud-stained villages he turned about andwearily made his way back to Givre. As he walked up theblack avenue, making for the lights that twinkled throughits pitching branches, he had a sudden realisation of hisutter helplessness. He might think and combine as he would;but there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he coulddo...
He dropped his wet coat in the vestibule and began to mountthe stairs to his room. But on the landing he was overtakenby a sober-faced maid who, in tones discreetly lowered,begged him to be so kind as to step, for a moment, into theMarquise's sitting-room. Somewhat disconcerted by thesummons, he followed its bearer to the door at which, acouple of hours earlier, he had taken leave of Mrs. Leath.
It opened to admit him to a large lamp-lit room which heimmediately perceived to be empty; and the fact gave himtime to note, even through his disturbance of mind, theinteresting degree to which Madame de Chantelle's apartment"dated" and completed her. Its looped and corded curtains,its purple satin upholstery, the Sevres jardinieres, therosewood fire-screen, the little velvet tables edged withlace and crowded with silver knick-knacks and simperingminiatures, reconstituted an almost perfect setting for theblonde beauty of the 'sixties. Darrow wondered that FraserLeath's filial respect should have prevailed over hisaesthetic scruples to the extent of permitting such ananachronism among the eighteenth century graces of Givre;but a moment's reflection made it clear that, to its lateowner, the attitude would have seemed exactly in thetraditions of the place.
Madame de Chantelle's emergence from an inner room snatchedDarrow from these irrelevant musings. She was alreadybeaded and bugled for the evening, and, save for a slightpinkness of the eye-lids, her elaborate appearance revealedno mark of agitation; but Darrow noticed that, inrecognition of the solemnity of the occasion, she pinched alace handkerchief between her thumb and forefinger.
She plunged at once into the centre of the difficulty,appealing to him, in the name of all the Everards, todescend there with her to the rescue of her darling. Shewasn't, she was sure, addressing herself in vain to onewhose person, whose "tone," whose traditions so brilliantlydeclared his indebtedness to the principles she besought himto defend. Her own reception of Darrow, the confidence shehad at once accorded him, must have shown him that she hadinstinctively felt their unanimity of sentiment on thesefundamental questions. She had in fact recognized in himthe one person whom, without pain to her maternal piety, shecould welcome as her son's successor; and it was almost asto Owen's father that she now appealed to Darrow to aid inrescuing the wretched boy.
"Don't think, please, that I'm casting the least reflectionon Anna, or showing any want of sympathy for her, when I saythat I consider her partly responsible for what's happened.
Anna is 'modern'--I believe that's what it's called when youread unsettling books and admire hideous pictures. Indeed,"Madame de Chantelle continued, leaning confidentiallyforward, "I myself have always more or less lived in thatatmosphere: my son, you know, was very revolutionary. Onlyhe didn't, of course, apply his ideas: they were purelyintellectual. That's what dear Anna has always failed tounderstand. And I'm afraid she's created the same kind ofconfusion in Owen's mind--led him to mix up things you readabout with things you do...You know, of course, that shesides with him in this wretched business?"Developing at length upon this theme, she finally narroweddown to the point of Darrow's intervention. "My grandson,Mr. Darrow, calls me illogical and uncharitable because myfeelings toward Miss Viner have changed since I've heardthis news. Well! You've known her, it appears, for someyears: Anna tells me you used to see her when she was acompanion, or secretary or something, to a dreadfully vulgarMrs. Murrett. And I ask you as a friend, I ask you as oneof US, to tell me if you think a girl who has had toknock about the world in that kind of position, and at theorders of all kinds of people, is fitted to be Owen's wifeI'm not implying anything against her! I LIKED the girl,Mr. Darrow...But what's that got to do with it? I don't wanther to marry my grandson. If I'd been looking for a wifefor Owen, I shouldn't have applied to the Farlows to find meone. That's what Anna won't understand; and what you musthelp me to make her see."Darrow, to this appeal, could oppose only the repeatedassurance of his inability to interfere. He tried to makeMadame de Chantelle see that the very position he hoped totake in the household made his intervention the morehazardous. He brought up the usual arguments, and soundedthe expected note of sympathy; but Madame de Chantelle'salarm had dispelled her habitual imprecision, and, thoughshe had not many reasons to advance, her argument clung toits point like a frightened sharp-clawed animal.
"Well, then," she summed up, in response to his repeatedassertions that he saw no way of helping her, "you can, atleast, even if you won't say a word to the others, tell mefrankly and fairly--and quite between ourselves--yourpersonal opinion of Miss Viner, since you've known her somuch longer than we have."He protested that, if he had known her longer, he had knownher much less well, and that he had already, on this point,convinced Anna of his inability to pronounce an opinion.
Madame de Chantelle drew a deep sigh of intelligence. "Youropinion of Mrs. Murrett is enough! I don't suppose youpretend to conceal THAT? And heaven knows what otherunspeakable people she's been mixed up with. The onlyfriends she can produce are called Hoke...Don't try toreason with me, Mr. Darrow. There are feelings that godeeper than facts...And I KNOW she thought of studyingfor the stage..." Madame de Chantelle raised the corner ofher lace handkerchief to her eyes. "I'm old-fashioned--likemy furniture," she murmured. "And I thought I could counton you, Mr. Darrow..."When Darrow, that night, regained his room, he reflectedwith a flash of irony that each time he entered it hebrought a fresh troop of perplexities to trouble its sereneseclusion. Since the day after his arrival, only forty-eight hours before, when he had set his window open to thenight, and his hopes h............